Thomas R. Wilson Quotes
We’re going to bomb this because it’s the Yugoslav department of military procurement.
We bombed the building but it was the Chinese embassy. The map and intelligence as to what was in the building was provided as a recommended target by the CIA in another of their serious blunders.
Thomas R. Wilson, Admiral & Director of Defense Intelligence, Statement while showing President Clinton a map and photo of the building, White House, July 1999
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Both President Truman and Genera MacArthur, in command in Korea, received this report and several confirmation reports in the subsequent days. On October 30, 1950, 100,000 Chinese troops attacked across the border almost driving MacArthur’s forces into the sea. The Chinese then pushed Allied forces all the way back to the 38th parallel—the divide between North and South Korea. This is yet another stunning example of the major international security events where the Central Intelligence Agency was in the dark and misadvised the administration. See {634967} for another quotation on this Central Intelligence Agency weakness.
There was no national uprising. Not a single Cuban came to assist the Bay of Pigs invaders, nor was there even one sabotage action or other revolutionary action anywhere in Cuba. The conviction of the CIA that Castro was hated by the Cubans and the overwhelming majority of Cubans would welcome an invasion was so completely wrong that it was stunning. The assurances the CIA planners had received that there would be an uprising came from Cuban anti-Castro émigrés who were being paid by the CIA to organize the invasion force. They would only continue to get paid if the American authorities felt that there was a very good chance of success so they turned out to have a serious conflict of interest. But the CIA planners had been hearing this from Cuban exiles not involved with the invasion and they had a strong bias that no communist government could be a popular one. It was a great illustration of the fact that experienced professional intelligence analysts and operatives are susceptible to self-delusion and confusing wishful thinking with reality.
Thomas Ray Wilson is a retired United States Navy vice admiral. He previously served as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from July 1999 to July 2002.
